West vindicated!

Question III.--Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?

No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated
the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly
preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism"
(page 54). "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though
its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is
still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a
cataclysm--the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later
on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or
savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.

That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to
several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability,
and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual
blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish
between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign
to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric
times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible--for what
criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an
excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the
public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some
20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and
historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology
bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature,
popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word--
superstition; and popular antiquities have become "fables" and
"folk-lore." The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius,
mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end--the dawn of
pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenae--at the nearest. The
latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of
about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were
hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately--
Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were
created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced
upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs. Had it not been
for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystic